


Memento (day 12-Grief)

by Only_Slightly_Obsessed (A_Stressed_Cupcake)



Series: Rémy's 2020 Multifandom Whumptober Works [12]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, This Is Sad, decent coping mechanisms but not for long, haha see what I did there, i mean they get retconned but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26995042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Stressed_Cupcake/pseuds/Only_Slightly_Obsessed
Summary: He’s asked himself a few times, when he felt the silence and loneliness of the apocalypse creep up on him, what would a therapist tell me to do? A good therapist._____Whumptober 2020- day 12: Grief
Series: Rémy's 2020 Multifandom Whumptober Works [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965271
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: Whumptober 2020, time traveler is always alone





	Memento (day 12-Grief)

**Author's Note:**

> cw: death :(

Grief is varied and strange, it always is, but Five’s grief is a different story entirely. 

It’s both simple and incredibly complicated. 

Simple, yes, because there’s nothing to it. His entire family, plus the whole world, is dead. That’s it.

On the other hand, there is probably not a single psychology book on the planet that can deal with a time traveler who got stuck in the future only to find it barren and empty of all life. He’s asked himself a few times, when he felt the silence and loneliness of the apocalypse creep up on him,  _ what would a therapist tell me to do? A good therapist. _

So far, he hasn’t found a definite answer. His siblings were never big on psychology and their father used it only to manipulate them. He knows that. And, while there’s plenty of psychology books left in the remains of the psychiatry ward of the city hospital, they’re less about suggesting solutions and more about identifying the problem. But Five knows exactly what his problem is, because it’s really not that hard to spot the glaring  _ immense grief and loneliness _ problem on the horizon. 

So he tries a few different things.

First, when the time comes to bury four of his siblings, he remembers from somewhere that mementos of dead people can help. Klaus told him once that they help spirits stick around. Naturally, Klaus is- or, was- hardly a reliable source of information, and Five knows he probably wouldn’t be able to sense their spirits whether they decided to stick around or not. But it’s a start.

The first thing he finds, aside from the fake eye clutched tightly in his cold hand, is Luther’s glove. Honestly, he doesn’t remember him ever wearing gloves like that. But he has it on, so it’s his, so it counts. Five just hopes the bloodstains will come off if he ever gets a chance to wash it.

Next, he plucks a throwing knife from Diego’s belt. Not just any knife. It’s a beautiful knife, actually, with a strange, almost wave-like design on the handle and a blade that has clearly been polished to perfection multiple times. There’s not a speck of blood on it. He has to wonder why Diego seemed to take better care of this one than any other. It feels weird to steal it from him, but he likes to think Diego would let him borrow it.

The third item, found in what remains of Allison’s bedroom, is a miraculously intact bottle of perfume. It’s almost full, which means it’s either new or Allison (and Klaus, presumably) did not like it all that much. But, God, it smells a bit like the one she used to wear when she was twelve. It wasn’t her first perfume, but it was the first Five noticed, when she wore it for a conference and they happened to be sitting right next to each other. It smells like her.

There isn’t much that he remembers in Klaus’s room. He probably sold most of it, but there is one thing that he distinctly remembers him having even seventeen years ago. It feels strange to take it, a gift from the first boy that, for whatever reason, maybe swayed by his lovely green eyes, actually liked Klaus back. It was a short relationship, back when they had just turned thirteen, and it ended the moment their father found out, but Klaus treasured it until the day Five left and, clearly, until the day he returned. It’s a little leather bracelet with steel beads; nothing too valuable to an adult, but to a teenager in love, it meant the world.

Ben is nowhere to be found, and evidence suggests that his room was locked when the Academy was destroyed. The place feels like a sanctuary. The dust on the floor is mixed with the soot from the air, but it’s clearly been there for a while. For a moment, he thinks about taking a book with him. But the room feels like a library, and it feels bad to take a book from him. Ben was always a bit jealous of his books. The best option is one of his notebooks. It feels so much more like him and, admittedly, he is just too curious to pass up the opportunity. Five remembers him writing feverishly in that navy blue notebook that sits untouched in the middle drawer, and curiosity wins him over. It turns out to be stories. They’re the greatest gift Ben could have left.

Vanya is also nowhere around the academy, or anywhere for that matter, but that’s less surprising, because when was she ever around the rest of them? Initially, he thinks about taking her violin, but that isn’t there either, nor is it at her apartment (he found her address on a phonebook). He searches her room, over and over. There’s just… nothing that satisfies him. Nothing that feels like it could truly encapsulate Vanya, nothing to remember her by. 

Until he searches Luther’s room, that is. 

In one of the drawers, he apparently kept a book with Vanya’s face on the cover and her name on the spine. 

_ Extra-Ordinary: my life as Number Seven _ .

He is stunned, initially. Vanya, a writer. Who’d have thought? But then, she was never the type to speak up. She always expressed herself indirectly, through the veil of a melody, a page, her clothes, anything but her voice. So, in the end, is it really that surprising?

The book absorbs his every waking moment for almost a week. 

It contains everything he needed to know, it contains seventeen missing years and more, and, most of all, it contains  _ Vanya _ . There’s no doubt in his mind that she wrote every single word. And there’s no telling how many times Five thanks her in his mind for writing such crucial information down for him, without even knowing it. 

He leaves after burying the first four and never finds the other two.

Five holds on to those six items as long as he can. 

Sometimes, when he dreams, he can feel his family sitting at his side. 

Sometimes, they say  _ good night _ .

**Author's Note:**

> I think about the "I keep this around because it smells like someone I miss" trope too much.
> 
> -Rémy


End file.
